COLUMBUS, Ohio – In front of the home crowd on Senior Day, Ohio Dominican gave the fans something to remember for quite some time with an impressive showing in the regular-season finale against No. 21 Findlay on Saturday, 49-24.
The Panthers (7-3, 7-0 G-MAC) celebrated their inaugural season in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference as league champions over the nationally and regionally-ranked Oilers (9-2, 6-1 G-MAC).
Ohio Dominican and Findlay will not await their playoff fate at the hands of the NCAA DII Committee on Selection Sunday with seven teams from Super Region One (G-MAC, Mountain East, PSAC and Northeast-10) all in consideration.
ODU snapped Findlay’s eight game win streak as both teams came into Panther Stadium with an identical 6-0 record in the conference schedule.
Ohio Dominican’s Grant Russell rifled a new single-game conference record six touchdown passes to various receivers. The senior signal caller was able to pick apart a Findlay secondary that only gave up seven TD’s through the air on the season coming in.
Russell finished with a regular season to remember, toppling the 3,000-yard passing mark to go with 30 touchdowns and only three interceptions. He completed almost 73 percent of all passes and averaged 318.2 yards per game. Russell took the league by storm to lead the conference in just about every passing category possible.
He threw three of those touchdowns to junior standout Cory Contini, who went over 1,000 yards receiving on the season on his first reception of the game. He would finish with 180 yards on just six catches.
Ohio Dominican came back from a pair of small first-half deficits and the defense seized control against a Findlay offense that has blitzed the league’s single-game team scoring records multiple times this season.
Tre McIntyre had 12 tackles by halftime and a swarming defense displayed emotional fire as Gus Dimmering, Cameron Kohl, Ryan Sayers, Brian Hunter and company, came up with some crucial stops.
New life was injected by Jacob Hill, who zipped through kickoff coverage unit for his second return for a score this year, a 93-yard dash to counter a 1-yard EJ Colson rushing TD. With the score manageable at 35-17, the Oilers pounded the ground game with 4-yard TD from Daouda Sylla in their first possession of the fourth quarter to cut the lead to 35-24.
Russell went back to work and guided the Panthers on scoring drives that resulted in 35-yard strikes to Devenaire Conliffe to really put the game on ice.
The celebration was underway as Sayers helped pour the Gatorade jug all over head coach Kelly Cummings as his team improved to 7-3 and stood tall in a game that many observers thought Findlay would win. Great Midwest Commissioner Tom Daeger was on site to present the 2017 championship trophy.
Ohio Dominican has now won five of the six meetings between the two schools in their respective history.
The coaches will now vote on the second annual Great Midwest All-Conference Team, which is scheduled to be released on Thursday.